Fake Followers on IG: Why Category Tagging Beats Follower Counts

Bren Daniel, a nine-year influencer marketing veteran who built Caraway's ambassador program from the ground up, walks through her practical framework for vetting creators on Instagram. She argues that follower count is a misleading proxy and that engagement rate combined with category tagging is a far stronger signal.

At Caraway, categorizing creators (mommy bloggers, home decor, lifestyle, wellness) revealed that mommy bloggers drove double the volume of home decor creators yet home decor drove double the revenue, and that pattern held for three years before wellness creators took over entirely. She also found that mommy bloggers under 80k followers converted significantly better than larger ones in the same category, a discovery that came only from quarterly performance analysis.

Bren's core argument is that vetting is not a one-time gut check but a data loop: your onboarding analysis should continuously reshape which categories and creator sizes you prioritize.

If you want to stop guessing about fake followers on IG and start making decisions grounded in actual conversion data, this three-minute breakdown is where to start.